Woman's 2 rings returned, thanks to 2 finders' honesty

It was several days before Lori Daniels realized her two Tiffany wedding bands were missing.

An injury required her to temporarily wear the rings on her right hand, and, unaccustomed to the feel, Daniels didn't notice when they disappeared.

They could have been anywhere. So the stay-at-home mother of three didn't just tear apart her home looking for the rings.

"I reorganized my entire life," she said. "I didn't tell my husband for a day or two. I searched high and low for a few days before I broke that news."

Enter Bruce Cunningham and Brian Frederick, who work together at Premiere Systems, 1400 N. Kingsbury St. — 21/2 blocks from the learning center where Daniels takes her children twice a week.

About three weeks ago, they each found one of Daniels' rings independently, eight hours apart, but neither man mentioned the find to the other. Cunningham showed the ring he found to colleague Ann Johnson, and they wrote a Craigslist ad and contacted a local Tiffany store manager to try to locate the ring's owner. Frederick held on to the ring he found and, weeks later, hearing his colleagues talk about finding a Tiffany ring, asked to be part of the search.

On a whim, Daniels stopped by the same local Tiffany store and told a clerk she'd lost her rings. Eventually, the clerk and manager realized they had been contacted about the same bands. The date engraved inside one of the bands helped to solve the mystery.

On Friday morning, Daniels was reunited with her rings, three weeks after losing them.

"You've shown so much integrity and compassion," Daniels told the two men as she presented them and Johnson with cards and a cash reward.

"In a bad economy, I didn't ever expect someone to turn them in," Daniels said, adding that she'd compiled a list of area pawn shops to scour. "You've restored my faith in people in Chicago."